Some of the Ethereum blockchain’s updates over time were a planned part of Ethereum’s progression, although others were adjustments based on events or factors that called for changes to the blockchain. The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) fork, for example, served as an effort to circumvent a hack. DAOs are a general concept in the crypto industry, whereas The DAO was a specific DAO from the crypto industry’s earlier days.
For a better understanding of DAOs in general, check out — What is a decentralized autonomous organization, and how does a DAO work?
A project that launched in 2016, the DAO served as an Ethereum-based decentralized autonomous organization fund that essentially democratized the fund’s asset allocation. Users don’t have to trust anyone else in the group with DAOs, they just need to trust a DAO’s code which is completely visible and verifiable by anyone. In short, interested parties sent ETH to a pool of funds within the DAO and received DAO tokens in return. These tokens could, at the time, be used to vote on where the DAO would allocate its pool of capital. The DAO attracted about $150 million worth of ETH in 2016, given ETH’s United States dollar price at the time.
In 2016, however, the DAO suffered a hack that took over 3.6 million ETH from the DAO’s asset pool. The Ethereum community disagreed on how to handle the ordeal. Part of the community wanted to alter the Ethereum blockchain to essentially nullify the hack. Opposing community members disagreed, expressing that such a play would go against the overarching concept of blockchain technology’s immutability.
A majority of the Ethereum community agreed with the play to alter the blockchain in response to the hack, leading to a hard fork of the network. The hard fork resulted in two separate blockchains and two separate native assets on those chains. The Ethereum blockchain forked off to regain the assets lost from the hack. The resulting forked asset and blockchain is the one that now holds the Ethereum name. What is now called Ethereum Classic
$36.51 is the original version of the Ethereum blockchain.